David Helwig: Poet Laureate 2008-2009

David Helwig was appointed Poet Laureate in January 2008, serving until December 2009.

Negatives

A monochrome adventuring: the chemicals

spread on polymer and exposed to a flash of light

hatch this peephole’s-worth of look, but glimpsed in reverse,

black snow, slate skin, branches in ivory silhouette,

haunted snow-shadowed eyes, abstracted from the heat

and breeding and decay of the gaudy universe,

landscape pressed to the transparency of night,

air’s inversion of plenitude, volume to line,

all of it mediated, miniature, its code

freezing one sixtieth of a second transposed

into this misty creation, shades cast in light,

a black dove descending toward a field of ash.

As X-ray transparencies reveal what we hide

in the roots of our teeth, forsaken memories

display themselves to us in swirling flecked black smoke,

pigmentation abandoned, the rainbow spectrum.

A monochrome yesterday gleams in pure shadows

of design; sharpness of line and lucent texture

sketch in grisaille an architecture of the past,

your bare toes grey upon grey, outlined in silver